Spring is a sacred season on any farm. Produce farms can finally put their seeds in the warm ground, chicks are hatching from eggs, and livestock graze on lush spring pastures. At Red Gate Farm, spring arrives with a hundreds of babies mooing.

Located down the road from Kriemhild Dairy in Hamilton, NY, Red Gate Farm is our sole milk supplier for our seasonal Meadow Butter. It is the second-largest grazing dairy in New York State and is owned and run by the Rivington family who practice holistic grazing management for over more than 1,500 acres of land.

The typical dairy farm produces milk year-round, meaning that calves are born throughout the year on a staggered schedule. Being a seasonal dairy, Red Gate Farm goes about breeding and parturition differently. All the cows at Red Gate are bred in the same span of time and therefore give birth in one short period at the beginning of spring. As you can imagine, it is the busiest time of the year on the farm.

The dairy farm lingo for a cow that has given birth is “fresh”. At Red Gate Farm over 350 cows freshen over a two month period. At this time, the farm transitions to a maternity ward. It is the birth of the calves that begins the cows’ natural lactation which will peak through the bountiful grazing season and continue until December.

Some of Red Gate's Calves From Past Seasons Gather for a Group Portrait.

But for as busy and hectic as it is, the season specifically set aside for calving is also reverent. Its suddenness and newness is the ultimate acknowledgement of the fertility and abundance of new life that comes with the spring season.

Meet Ava. She's our first calf of the season!

As we all look forward to another season of fresh grass-fed Meadow Butter, we’re also just as excited to receive the newest additions to the herd. About 140 of the calves born this spring will be the future milking cows of Red Gate Farm, known by the term “heifers”, which is a pretty good gig as cow-jobs go. So far, more 100 calves have been born this season. As the calf barn fills up with brand new bouncing baby bovines, we’re gearing up to introduce you to them.

On Saturday, April 29th, Red Gate Farm is hosting Calving Day. Whether or not you have visited the farm before, Calving Day will be a great time to make a trip. It will be a special event highlighting the natural cycle and processes that surround seasonal grass-fed dairy farming. We encourage anyone who wants to know more about where their food comes from to join us at the farm to celebrate the start of the season.

Until then, we’ll be keeping you abreast with our Calving Day COW-ntdown (we couldn’t help ourselves). As our Calving Day event approaches, we’ll be counting-down the days and adding-up the number calves we’ve welcomed to the farm. Stay tuned on social media & here on our website for the running total of fresh baby calves!

We Did It

​We challenged ourselves for 30 days straight to provide you with daily proof that Crème Fraîche can be a simple and delicious part of your everyday breakfast. Now, on the other side of those 30 days, we hope you find yourselves a little less afraid of the kitchen, a little more hungry for breakfast in the morning, and a lot more in love with the “queen of cream”. We, ourselves, feel more confident armed with some new favorite recipes. But no challenge is without its lessons, and #cremefast was no exception. Here are few of ours:

Thank goodness the container is recyclable. At the beginning of each recipe, we thought one 8 oz Crème Fraîche would be enough, since the recipe would call for just, let’s say, ½ cup. We always found some way to add more, either as a dollop topping or just licking the spoon. Long story short, after 30 days we sure racked up on little tubs. In hindsight, using the 32oz size would have been far more practical; especially as a more cost and material efficient size for regular use.​

You can never have too much of a good thing, and creme friache definitely goes in category! Crème Fraîche is never redundant, and our first and experience with eating it every morning proves it. Recipes that call for Crème Fraîche in a dish and then suggest it as a topping are the best. Go big or go hungry.

Our customers and fellow food producers are inspiring. We feel so blessed to be able to go to any of our farmers’ markets and to come back home with a bounty of new recipe suggestions and the best local goods around. Trying a new dairy ingredient takes guts, and we’re so thankful to have customers like you that are excited to experiment and give us feedback from their own kitchens. Also, having access to so many local ingredients makes our own experimentation all the more tasty. So, thanks to local cooks and farmers alike!

Creme Fraiche Coffee Cream is NOT the new ‘bulletproof coffee.’ We tried it; so you don’t have to. So don’t. Please. This was the most fantastic failure of our recipe experimentation.

There you have it. This 30-day challenge may be done, but there are so many more meals during the day, and our experimental spirit is only stronger thanks to this Crème Fraîche for breakfast challenge. Until next time, remember you can find all 30 of our #cremefast recipes right here on our blog.

Dutch Baby Pancake | adapted from dashandbella.blogspot.com

Put an 8 or 9 inch cast iron pan (or ovenproof dish) into the oven. Preheat oven to 425°F. You want your pan to be very hot.

In a food processor or a blender, blend the out of the eggs, milk, crème fraîche, flour, salt, and vanilla very well (30 seconds or so). If you mix it by hand, add the flour in a few batches and mix really well.

Add butter to the hot pan in the oven. The butter will brown very fast. When just melted, remove pan from the oven, quickly pour in the batter, and put the pan back in the oven. Resist the urge to open the oven. After a few minutes the pancake will start to climb up the sides of the pan and puff up in the middle. It's done when the edges start to turn brown and the batter is just set in the middle.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Combine milk and lemon juice, to make the buttermilk, and set aside. Mix flour, soda, salt, and sugar into a medium sized mixing bowl.

Break the meadow butter up in the flour, working with your fingers, until the butter is in pea-sized pieces.

Mix in the buttermilk with a wooden spoon until combined. If too wet to work with dust in more flour.

Transfer to a well floured surface to roll out the dough. Roll into a roughly 8"x11" rectangle. Then, fold the left 1/3 of the dough towards the center, followed by the right 1/3 towards the center. This is just like folding a letter to stuff into an envelope.

Roll the dough back out to 8"x11", repeat folding process, and do this 4 or 5 times to develop a lot of flaky layers in your biscuits. Return the dough to the fridge to rest for 5 minutes to allow the gluten to relax, otherwise, as you attempt to roll the dough out to cut the biscuits, it will keep pulling back to a smaller size.

Roll out the final dough to about 1/4" thick. Egg wash, into desired shapes, and place on the sheet pan.

​Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

Gravy:

Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan on medium heat. Add onion, sausage, and thyme. Sauté until the sausage is lightly browned, about 4 minutes.

Add the 2 tablespoons of reserve butter. Once melted, stir in the flour to make a roux. Cook, stirring frequently, for 2 minutes.

Add the milk and creme fraîche and stir until the roux is incorporated with the dairy products. Stir in more milk if you want a thinner consistency for the gravy.

From the beginning, our labels on both our Meadow Butter and Crème Fraîche have always read: “From our Grass-Fed Cows.” As we have grown from a small local company to one with a wider regional presence, we have and continue to reflect on our labeling choices to ensure that we are communicating clearly and accurately about our products.

Recently, two of Kriemhild’s owners attended the 2017 American Grassfed Association Conference (AGA) at The Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. This conference spoke directly to our commitment to the agricultural practice of grazing, and to its impact on creating a better production ecosystem for our farmers, our farmers’ animals, our customers, and our environment. After attending the AGA conference, we felt inspired to make a finer, yet very important, distinction in our labeling.

​“Grass-Grazed” and “Grass-Fed”

As you, our customer, inquires more about the origins of their food, the need for more exacting label standards have grown. In response to the greenwashing free-for-all that has been occurring through American supermarkets, the AGA presented their new 100% Grass-Fed Dairy Standard. This new 100% Grass-Fed Dairy label is the next critical step towards complete transparency and consistency throughout our food system. We at Kriemhild want to honor that industry growth, which is why we are committing to following these new labeling standards.

As part of this commitment, we have begun to transition our Crème Fraîche labeling from “Grass-Fed” (the same as we label our Meadow Butter) to be newly distinguished as “Grass-Grazed.” Although having labeled our Crème Fraîche “Grass-Fed” before was not a technical misnomer for the management style of our Crème Fraîche dairy producers, we feel that “Grass-Grazed” is now a more transparent and consistent descriptor. ​

​So, what do we mean by Grass-Grazed?

The milk for our Crème Fraîche comes from four small Amish family farms in Chenango County, NY. Their cows’ pasture-based diets are supplemented with a portion of hay, Non-GMO corn silage (a ferment) and/or Non-GMO grain depending on the scale of the family’s farm. All of these Crème Fraîche partner farms’ diet plans are greater than 40% pasture grass, which exceeds the 30% minimum set by the National Organic Standard for pasture intake by grazing.

So, when you now see “Grass-Grazed” on Kriemhild Crème Fraîche labels, you know that the cows have a diet that consists of a minimum of 40% fresh pasture during the grazing season, and that their diet was supplemented first with hay, then Non-GMO grain or Non-GMO corn silage. As before and as always, our Meadow Butter remains distinguished as a “Grass-Fed” product from cows on a diet of only pasture, hay, and hay ferment.

​Our Amish Farm Partners: The Origin of your Crème Fraîche​

New York has the fastest-growing Amish population of all states, and very often, when Amish families settle in NY they buy and rejuvenate old dairy farms. New York state is the third leading producer of dairy products in the United States, and yet from 1990 to 2010, NY lost half of its smaller dairy farms. This decline of family farms has negatively impacted local economies and degraded the rural character and quality of open spaces in upstate New York. Our Amish farm partners play a critical role in reversing this trend, revitalizing neglected farmland and supporting local economies. ​

Eli Hershberger, one of our Amish farm partners, moved to NY with his family when he was 16 years old. He began dairy farming after his brother passed away from a premature heart attack, leaving behind a wife and eight children. Together, this resilient family farms a small herd of 15 milking cows, which are all milked by hand every day. The milk is carried in traditional milk cans to a shared building that houses four large commercial milk tanks, one for each Amish dairy farm we work with. From there, the milk is picked up and trucked to our co-packer facility in Norwich, NY where it is cultured and packaged into your Crème Fraîche.

Environmental stewardship is the cornerstone of Amish agricultural practices. If Eli could increase the share of grazing time he gives his cows, he would. At the time being, land and fencing are his largest challenges. Permanent fencing is a significant expense, and given that many Amish avoid using electricity, cheaper temporary electric wire is not an option. Like many farmers, Eli is working the best he can with the resources he has. He is aware that if he supplements too little grain the cows will overgraze the finite pasture he has for them, which causes lasting detrimental effects to the land. In order to assure that his land will be able to produce enough fresh grass throughout the grazing season, Eli gives supplemental non-GMO feed to manage the ecological pressure on his fields.

Eli and our other Amish family farms have always produced high quality milk with an ecological and health-centered conscience. We know they will continue to seek excellence in environmental stewardship and animal husbandry, and now you know we just have a better name for their practices: "Grass-Grazed" Dairy. We feel this distinction offers you greater transparency and also consistency with regards to labeling. Our commitment to you to provide ecological, nutritional, and ethical excellence is only stronger with our newly defined terminology, as is our commitment to our local communities and the family farms we partner with.​

Break the eggs into a cold, heavy-based pan, place on the lowest heat possible, and add half the butter. Using a spatula, stir the eggs frequently to combine the yolks with the whites.

As the mixture begins to set, add the remaining butter. The eggs will take about 4-5 minutes to scramble – they should still be soft and quite lumpy. Don’t let them get too hot – keep moving the pan off and back on the heat(as the bottom of the pan stays heated even after taking it off of the stove).

Meanwhile, toast the bread. He used sourdough bread.

Add the crème fraîche and season the eggs at the last minute, then add the snipped chives. Put the toast on warm plates, pile the softly scrambled eggs on top and serve immediately.

8 ounces of pizza dough, homemade or storebought (half of a standard package, so double the recipe if making a full pizza)

1/4 cup creme fraiche

1/2 cup and 2 tbsp. grated parmesan, divided

1/2 cup shredded mozzarella

3 slices thick cut bacon

1 small red onion, chopped

1/2 cup sliced baby bella mushrooms

2 medium eggs

1/2 sprig of fresh rosemary, chopped

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees

Lay strips of bacon in a cold skillet and cook over low heat, flipping occasionally so the bacon browns easily on both sides, cooking until the bacon is cooked through and starting to crisp, about 8-10 minutes.

Transfer to a paper-towel lined plate.

Pour out extra rendered bacon fat, reserving about 1 tbsp in the pan. Add the chopped red onion and cook over medium-high heat until onions are translucent and golden, about 8-10 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add the chopped mushrooms to the same pan and cook until mushrooms begin to shrink, about 5 minutes.

Season with salt and pepper. Remove from pan and set aside.

Stretch dough over a lightly floured surface into a 12-14 inch wide oval. Transfer to a baking sheet or pizza stone.

Spread the creme fraiche into a thin layer, leaving a 1/2 inch for the crust. Add layer of mozzarella and 1/2 cup of parmesan, then spoon the mushrooms and caramelized onions around the edges of the pizza to form a ring.

For runny yolks:

Separate the egg whites from the yolks, and add only the egg whites into the center of the pizza. Lay the strips of bacon on the edges of the egg whites. Bake the pizza for 5-7 minutes until the egg whites begin to set. Briefly remove the pizza from the oven and add the egg yolks into the center of each egg white.

Bake the pizza for an additional 3-5 minutes until egg whites are fully set but yolks are still soft. Remove the pizza from the oven and sprinkle chopped fresh rosemary and remaining grated parmesan on top.

Slice and enjoy.

If you want fully cooked yolks:

Add the whole eggs into the center of the pizza. Lay the strips of bacon at the edges of the eggs, and bake the pizza for 8-10 minutes until the eggs are fully set.

Remove the pizza from the oven and sprinkle chopped fresh rosemary and remaining grated parmesan on top. Slice and enjoy.